


As Much As You Get, Give.

by StripySock



Category: The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, First Meeting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doesn't matter where they start. All it matters is where they end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Much As You Get, Give.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chosenfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chosenfire/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I loved all your prompts.

Before Brian, cops were divided into two categories, fuckers and misguided fuckers. There were the ones with a badge and a gun, cruising for trouble in the bad part of the neighbourhood, ready and willing to take down kids who'd yanked suckers and cold sodas, warnings in their hand and a rap sheet just waiting round the corner. Then there were the misguided ones. Think they're making a difference, fresh faced and ready to take down the bad guys, even if they weren't exactly sure who the bad guys even were.

 

You got the first kind round when things went wrong, and they leaned on the counter, every movement screaming _mine,_ like dogs pissing on their territory, sprawled casually on the counter little half sneer on their face that said _give me what I want and I might not bump this down the priority queue_. Kind that asked for chicken, all the trimmings, left the bill unpaid. Dom knows their fucking handbook inside out and that's not anywhere, not included in the manual. They've got their dicks in their hands and they're ready to rumble, and they don't want to be shown up, questioned. They're not the majority, but they're enough that Dom gets a sour taste in his mouth at the casual possession they take of everything around them.

 

The second kind sit there with their little notebooks and make the listening face, the one that says they understand that Dom is a small business owner, and Mia is his employee, and that this is very, very serious. They wanna help, if they just could figure out how. Three fucking threats, zero arrests, and Dom's given up on hoping for anything from the cops. The Torettos are out on the front, target for every drifter bum who doesn't see Dom, but sees Mia and thinks some easy money can be made by threatening and hurting some student just trying to mitigate her loans.

 

The fourth time, they sent Brian. Brian who listens to everything Mia says, without interjecting his thoughts, gets everything down on paper and recorded, suggests sensible measures, ones he's seen other people take and make work - not the ones like expensive alarm systems that notify the cops straight off, but the other little methods that give that little bit more safety. He namedrops books Mia knows, about how people work and think, and Dom wants to hate him - to stick him in that second category, but he can't.

 

Brian is genuine. There's this smile he gives, almost reluctant, spreads out across his face like an infection, swift flash of white teeth, dent in his face like he's swallowing it back when Dom makes a joke. He ducks his head like a police officer shouldn't be seen laughing, and when Dom really works for it, Brian tosses his head back and lets go, deep and real. He's the first cop that exceeds his uniform, something more than drab and buttons and a cap that makes him sweat. He comes back round, the next day, a follow up report to make sure that Mia's holding up well, that she isn't scared. He doesn't lean on the counter, he stretches back on the stool and waits 'til Mia's done.

 

Somehow they end up swapping numbers, Brian drops by more often, tells Dom straight up that a cop around the place might make people think twice. He knows Dom's record but he doesn't treat him any different, eyes clear and straight, weighing and assessing, but no judgement. Dom doesn't mean it to go even a little bit further. Brian might be that rare beast, a decent cop in the wild, but Dom's wary as hell. He hasn't grown up in a way that rewards trust or asks for it to be yielded, from anyone who isn't family, isn't years close. Brian doesn't belong at their dinners or their grill-outs. There's an impassable barrier between what Brian is and what he can be to the Torettos.

 

Only none of that intuition, none of that feeling, serves Dom well, because neither he nor Mia counted on just exactly how hard Brian could push, without ever looking like it. Mia breaks first, but Dom can't blame her, because one second more of Brian looking down at his hands at the mention of Thanksgiving, or any time a holiday came up, and he'd have cracked as well. It becomes disarmingly easy to give, when the other person never asks. Brian doesn't bargain or ask, or swap favors or rides, never starts off a conversation with a weighed measure of what they have to share. He just lays what he has on the table, gives in a way that invites reciprocation but doesn't demand it.

 

It's the last thing Dom ever expected in any capacity. A cop on the other side of his dinner table, feet against a chair, Corona in his hand, burying his smile behind a slice of lime. "Tuna," he calls out, and Mia gives him a playful slap on the head.

 

"Rude," she says, and Brian, who spends his time washing up after their meals, and dragging Dom right on in to help, the power of a good example, gives her a grin.

 

"I would never be such a thing," he says. "I can't help yearning for the tuna though." He likes to order food when he comes round off-shift, always tuna. Dom doesn't have a clue why, but he likes the look it gives Mia; half frustration, half amusement, smooths out some of those worry lines that sometimes creep up, no matter what he can do.

 

It's almost the first time that Dom's ever wanted to wipe a look like that off Brian's handsome face by using his own. Brian's an exception to every rule - an exception to cops, an exception to Mia, an exception to Dom. And when he reached out without fear, without expectation, an exception to himself. There's some quiet interior strength to Brian that Dom can respect, acknowledge even as it terrifies the shit out of him to imagine doing that in the open, outside Lompoc, outside jail. Brian stretches something into the light that only ever belonged in the dark, and every time Dom tries to think about it, logically, neatly, his heart speeds up and he sweats like he's caught beneath sodium lights, exposed and alone. He lives in the moment, his seconds at a time, the fast, fierce rush of adrenaline blocking out every bit of shit that's gone before.

 

Brian lives ten seconds after that. He lives the ride and sticks around for the cool down.

 

Which is why, way after the first time that Brian's come round, long after the first time he looked at Dom with something in his eyes that made Dom's blood heat and his heart thump, that he works on his car, in Dom's garage, doesn't push a single thing, but doesn't back away. Just waits and lets Dom push him instead, laughs and ducks his head again. Not like Brian's wise all the time though - he's a loudmouth, hot headed, gets in Vince's face when he has to, throws down and displays. Just two ways he pulls back - his work and Dom. Lets both come to him.

 

Brian doesn't know what's stacked in the boxes behind him, as he works on his piece of shit car, takes it apart and puts it together under Dom's careful eyes. He doesn't know that the product of months of careful work is piled up in careless piles in the back of the garage as though it's of no value at all. Mia’s loans, the repayments that Dom still makes from what what he did cost, the thing he'll pay for forever even when the bills are paid. Perhaps that holds Dom back, more than anything ever could. even knowing what Brian is, what Dom might be - what they could be together. It might be the remnants of conscience - Brian's a cop, a cop-cop, the kind that helps kids across the road and believes deep down that bad guys should be caught. Would seem wrong to promise him anything, even without words when everything that Dom is and can't quit surrounds them.

 

So he stays away, doesn't pick up what Brian puts down. Thinks of what Brian might be, what Brian could become. There's something bright in him that demands attention - he's gonna go far, it's not impossible that one day they'll face each other on opposite sides of an artificial fence. Dom doesn't want to think about that. Brian on the other end of a gun, no trace of a smile on a face that was made for it.

 

He doesn’t know why he shows Brian the Charger. Nobody sees it. Not Vince, not Leon, not even Letty, keeping her wary distance from him as they shift towards new goals. He’d show Mia if she asked, he shows Brian because he’d never. Just watches the way that Brian touches, the way he looks at Dom first as though for permission to trail his hands over the smooth black trim- not the only thing in Dom’s life that runs first cold then hot. He touches it, like he knows what it is - something that has Dom tied up in knots as bad as Brian ever could. His look says more than his touch, it’s greedy in the way it roams, but not possessive. He wants to know. Doesn’t want to own.

 

Dom doesn’t lack brute courage. Doesn’t lack the force of his convictions, and they’re what make him take that step in the end. It’s the same instinct that drives him to hurl himself in front of speeding trucks, to dodge their wheels and take on their drivers. Brian makes him want to do that, in the same way a car sweet-tuned until it sings makes him want to ride it hard and fast until it talks just to him, low deep down purr. Brian evokes the same reaction, the same instinctive sway towards, and then fight against. Dom doesn't want to tear Brian up in everything that Dom is. Poison what he has, what he is. He knows what Brian can't, that their lives are too far apart to ever meet with every lie stripped away, unless there's a gun between them and a badge. Worthy reasons, good reasons. Every bit of it is true. None of it stops Brian from kissing him in the dark, by Dom's father's car, eager hard press of himself, all of him in the moment. None of it stops Dom from kissing back and letting principle burn - it's not the first thing that he's watched wither.


End file.
